I learned two new things from a Worldwide Story Work teleconference this week presented by Malcolm Jones, an expert in ideation and sketching. Well, probably a lot more than two, but these were the ones that really stood out.

An affinity for visual storytelling over text-based storytelling (or vice versa) probably reflects one’s learning style. Yes, that’s kind of a “duh” statement, and I’m sure I knew it on some level, but I hadn’t thought about it before Jones’s teleconference (even though Wednesday’s entry was about learning styles). I found it difficult to personally relate to Jones’s assertion that writing is very difficult for many people; yet, that observation is true to my experience. Writing comes incredibly easily to me, but I know from six-plus years of teaching business communication to college students that writing is agony for many. Some find linear storytelling to be a painful process, Jones says, and visual storytelling is less linear and more spatial than written storytelling. He also points out that the brain takes in visual stories differently than it takes in linear, written stories, yielding different insights. And an affinity for one over the other reflects differences in right- or left-brain dominance. Especially intriguing was Jones’s reminder that some 60 percent of people are visual learners. Given that stat, it’s almost surprising that visual storytelling isn’t more dominant over text-based storytelling.

Jones also noted that storytelling literally comes into play in business in the form of games and role-plays. He reported that corporate groups are building things out of LEGOs to solve business problems, using a process called LEGO Serious Play. Jones cited a book on business play, which seems to cover more than just LEGOs, Serious Play.

Jones talked a bit about comics and storyboarding and recommended three tools:

To that list, I would add ComicLife, the comic software app for Mac. I’ve never used ComicLife for an actual comic, but I use it lots of other graphics functions since I don’t have and don’t know how to use Photoshop. As Jones notes, these tools can help one tell a story with comics — but necessarily a good story.